CANADA: My father cheated on my mother

I'm finding it hard to want to mend things with him. What should I do? TORONTO (Globe and Mail), August 19, 2008: LIFE: Family & Relationships - Family Fued By Micah Toub, Globe and Mail Update A reader writes: While I was young I had a father who was a troubled, burdened man. This greatly affected our father-daughter relationship. Recently we had sorted through most of our problems — which had mostly to do with his anger and past substance abuse — until one day he broke down and told me that he once had a brief affair on my mother. He told my mother about it, and from what I have heard from her she has come to terms with it and forgiven him — not to say she wasn't extremely hurt by it, though. Still, this has been very hard on me. I'm finding it hard to want to continue to mend things at this point. Should I be concerned about the distance this is causing for future grandkids and work hard again at mending the relationship, or just keep the resulting distance as is? Answer: I totally get why this disclosure is hard for you right now. When your father told you about this past infidelity, he basically strapped you into a time machine and sent you whizzing back to being that little girl again, the one with a troubled dad. You're an adult now, so you are likely able to understand his affair more than if you'd found out when you were young. But I wouldn't be surprised if at this moment you're drowning in thousands of memories, trying to fit in this new information, and thus reliving all the trauma, revisiting all the badness that was. Thanks, Dad. I consulted Jill Ceccolini, a social worker in Halifax who has often worked with couples and families suffering through infidelity, and the first thing she identified about you is this: "It's clear that family connection is something she values highly." Only when she said that did I realize that this is not a given. Some people disconnect easily, at the first sign of trouble. You, on the other hand, have toiled extremely hard to mend things with your father because it is important to you. Now your dad has betrayed you again. Well, not exactly, but as Ms. Ceccolini puts it, "This infidelity becomes one more piece of evidence that says this man may not be worth the effort." But, Ms. Ceccolini also believes infidelity doesn't have to tear a family apart. In fact, she says it often does the opposite. She points out that the common wisdom you hear from friends or on TV shows is, "If somebody's unfaithful to me, they'd be gone." But based on what she sees in her office, an affair can also have a positive effect. "In my work with couples, infidelity is a pretty common theme, and I'm always humbled by the strengthening that can happen in a couple as they work to rebuild," she says. By the sounds of it, this might be exactly what happened between your parents. This is not to say you should call your dad up right now and thank him for this opportunity to build a stronger relationship. However, I'm going to take a leap here and suggest that your father told you about the indiscretion as a way of saying, "Look, I'm going to be up front from now on. You can trust me." On the other hand, he may just be selfishly looking for you to relieve the guilt that obviously still weighs on him. Either way, it backfired in a bad way, because all it did is make you trust him less. But let's forget about his motivations and get back to you. The fact that you're even thinking about your as-of-yet non-existent kids reinforces Ms. Ceccolini's observation that family is important to you. And your question makes it clear that you haven't totally given up on having a relationship with him. There's a part of you that still wants this. Which says to me that there must be something to salvage, even if you won't be as close with him as you'd ideally like to be. If, in the end, you decide that your dad's a complete jerk and there really is nothing worth salvaging, then Ms. Ceccolini reassures that "what the children might lose in not knowing their grandfather, you can make up in a different way." Plus, your imaginary kids can decide for themselves later on if they want to get in touch with that loser. But before it comes to this, give yourself a chance to reverse the time machine and come back to the future. Trust me, this new ugly piece of information will sting less in a few weeks and you'll have a much better sense of how to work it out with him. © Copyright 2008 CTVglobemedia Publishing Inc.